Kirkbymoorside Primary School

School Curriculum - English (Reading)

Intent

At Kirkbymoorside Community Primary, we want to foster a lifelong love of reading by exposing our children to various literature across all curriculum areas. We believe reading opens up a new world for children and gives them the opportunity to explore new ideas, visit new places , meet new characters and develop a better understanding of other cultures. Building up the children’s vocabulary gives them the word power they need to become successful speakers and writers as well as confident readers. Reading is a key life skill and we strive to embed a culture of reading into the core of what we do, providing opportunities for children to read both independently and aloud as well as allowing them the chance to discuss and recommend books they have read to their peers. Reading and quality literature is implicitly interwoven into our curriculum through the use of key texts to expose our children to various genres and famous authors and to enhance the variety of exciting topics that we teach.

Children in Key Stage 1 and Reception take part in RWI phonics sessions to teach word reading skills and comprehension skills. In Key Stage 2 we use guided reading to teach retrieval, deduction and inference skills through appropriately banded books as well as whole class reading to ensure that all children are able to access texts which are appropriately challenging in terms of content and comprehension requirements. Across school, all children read an individual book and have the opportunity to regularly read to an adult in school.

Reading for pleasure is key – children are given dedicated reading for pleasure time. In the classroom, inviting reading areas are incorporated and whole class texts, often linking to topic, are shared with the children. We believe that children will love books when they can fully understand the layers of meaning and the reflections they can offer. Therefore a large part of promoting a love of reading is through our dialogic discussions in class, where layers of meaning can be uncovered.